The U.S. Federal Trade Commission will examine the rise of AI technology across all fronts, said FTC Chair Lina Khan, speaking at TechCrunch’s StrictlyVC event in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. However, the agency’s goal is not to crush the startups that are aiming to compete in this space with increased regulation, Khan said. “We want … Read more
When generative AI tools started making waves in late 2022 after the launch of ChatGPT, the finance industry was one of the first to recognize these tools’ potential for speeding up the data-gathering and research process. Speed, after all, is vital when you’re advising investors who need to respond quickly to market changes. Now a … Read more
Artificial intelligence, for all its wonders, is starting to get a bad reputation among consumers. AI chatbots are prone to hallucinate — that is, make up the answers when they don’t know how to respond, confidently presenting incorrect information as if it were a fact. Google’s AI overhaul of Search went so poorly that Google … Read more
General Motors is investing $850 million into Cruise as the autonomous vehicle subsidiary slowly makes its way back to testing in Phoenix, Dallas and, as of Tuesday, Houston. GM’s CFO Paul Jacobson announced the capital infusion on stage at Deutsche Bank’s Global Automotive Industry Conference on Tuesday. “This will help bridge Cruise funding until we … Read more
Mistral AI has closed its much-rumored Series B funding round, raising €600 million (around $640 million at today’s exchange rate) in a mix of equity and debt. General Catalyst led the round. As TechCrunch previously reported, the startup is now valued at $6 billion following this funding round. As a reminder, Mistral AI is a … Read more
Apple’s keynote at WWDC 2024 was packed with new platform updates and the release of Apple Intelligence, the company’s generative AI offering. But after all, it’s a developer conference, and Apple is giving developers more tools to increase their app revenues and promote their apps with win-back offers and the release of a new commerce … Read more
Voodoo, a french mobile apps and games publisher, has acquired BeReal for €500 million. BeReal, which has more than 40 million active users, gained popularity during the height of the pandemic. The acquisition comes as BeReal was struggling to grow its user base and was looking for a buyer. “BeReal achieved incredible user loyalty and … Read more
Crunchbase is expanding the scope of its tagging options in Europe to start tracking how much venture capital funding goes to minority founders on the continent. Diversity Spotlight is a feature on Crunchbase that lets companies add tags to their profiles to label themselves. For example, a company can opt-in to label itself as Black-owned … Read more
A Finnish startup called Flow Computing is making one of the wildest claims ever heard in silicon engineering: by adding its proprietary companion chip, any CPU can instantly double its performance, increasing to as much as 100x with software tweaks. If it works, it could help the industry keep up with the insatiable compute demand … Read more
Apple announced at WWDC 2024 on Monday that iPadOS 18 will include a new “Smart Script” feature that will clean up your handwriting when using an Apple Pencil to write in Notes. With Smart Script, Apple says it’s making handwriting your notes even smoother and straighter. The feature improves the appearance of your writing as … Read more